Need and Plenty
by Perosha
Summary: Backstory/pre-series. Dilan's early life through the lens of cooking and food.


Hunger is the fourth member of their family. She joined the toddler and his mother and her brother on their way out of the capitol when the armies broke it like an egg, and a year later she still follows them across the countryside as they go Anywhere, arriving Nowhere, never welcome in one place for long. Sometimes hunger leaves them for days, even weeks at a time—but she always grows lonely, and comes back for their company soon enough.

When his stomach has been empty long enough, he cries. His mother holds him until he sleeps, and when he sleeps she cries too, silently praying to the gods that gaze out of the silver stars. He learns not to cry.

* * *

><p>Five is old enough for him to help in whatever ways he can. As the iron skillet warms on the bare coals his mother mixes flour and water together for the dough, and when it's ready she divides it into little balls, showing him how to roll one out to make a circle. When he finishes she lays it into the skillet (no sizzle of precious oil, it can't be wasted on this), and a minute on each side turns the thin moons of dough into small flatbreads that hold their meager leftovers. He's very careful with rolling the dough, trying to make the circles perfect. His uncle laughs at his serious face.<p>

* * *

><p>A town. The room is theirs as long as they pay. The landlady nods at Dilan and his uncle when they leave on errands, and at the butcher's his uncle haggles well enough to get them a few of the day's scraps on top of what little he counts out coins for. Having the boy there helps with the bargaining, though Dilan doesn't realize it, his gaze passing over the juicy carcasses hanging in the window with all the longing of a fox. At home the meat goes into a stew to celebrate his uncle's new job, and before it's served his mother cracks and roasts the extra bones, smearing the gooey marrow onto a piece of toasted black bread and sprinkling it with salt. Dilan devours it in less than a minute, the hot fat rich and succulent on his tongue; in six years he's never had such a treat.<p>

* * *

><p>A city. The bakery doesn't open until after light, but Dilan is there long before, stamping and breathing clouds as he waits in the alleyway out back. There's a routine to this weekly ritual; twice the baker's assistant comes out to shoo him away, and twice he refuses to budge, so that when the door opens a third time the man holds one of the day's first loaves wrapped in thick paper, and gives it to him for half of what they'll sell the rest for in two hours. The reward for Dilan's patience is full permission to gnaw the heel of the fresh round loaf as he hurries home, the bread warming his chilled fingers as he walks, its flesh as white and soft as the crust is coarse and hard. He does his fair share of the errands now, at seven, but this task is his favorite.<p>

* * *

><p>Their newest home is both town and city, somehow, the former's size and the latter's luxury married happily. They call it the Radiant Garden, and for good reason; vegetables cost nearly nothing. His mother adds more of them to her barley soup than she ever has before, and eight-year-old Dilan stands on a chair beside her, stirring the polenta, vigilantly keeping it from burning.<p>

The rickety little house is the largest and cleanest they've ever rented, and when they sit down to dinner his uncle declares this roof will belong to them someday, as Dilan's mother spoonfeeds the little boy a faithless lover gave her last year. They've had this exact meal countless times, but it tastes better tonight, with distant laughter drifting in from the lamplit street that mingles with the smell of flowers.

* * *

><p>He tries ice cream for the first time on a field trip, biting into it with quick-eyed suspicion as the teacher ushers the giggling class across the plaza. The creamy sweetness arrests him, coating his mouth in a way his mother's simple fruit ices never have, and when the group stops to learn about a statue he hangs back, studying the dripping block of color on a stick. At nine he lags behind his age group in school, having never attended it before. The teachers praise his quick mind, but for want of practice he's far less skilled at reading and math than he should be. Books were precious few before Radiant Garden, and his mother reads as slowly as he does. He finishes his ice cream when the teacher notices he's missing and calls out to him to catch up.<p>

* * *

><p>Every night he wrestles fiercely with his homework, setting pencil to paper with a fire fanned high by knowing he is somehow deficient compared to other children his age. He can join their class, he knows, if he can catch up—and catch up he is ferociously determined to do. Ten is plenty old enough to feel how deep humiliation can bite.<p>

His mother can't help him with his studies, but the fact that she never had schooling makes her that much happier that her son has this chance and is seizing it so tightly. She ladles hot shakshuka out of the skillet into a separate bowl for him, so that he can eat at his own pace over his work instead of lingering at dinner with the rest of the family. Dilan writes carefully with one hand and uses a piece of flatbread to mop his meal up with the other, his bright eyes scanning the page.

* * *

><p>Starting at eleven he's home alone most weekend mornings, left in charge of his four-year-old brother while his mother and uncle both work. It's an easy task. The little one has none of his sibling's self-imposed severity; he's always smiling and laughing, blue-eyed and golden-haired, already grown bright and soft under the warmth of Radiant Garden's light. He squeals as they watch breakfast through the door of the electric oven, the big pancake puffing with air and crawling up the sides of the skillet. When it collapses in on itself, Dilan rubs it with a lemon wedge and snow-fine powdered sugar. His brother chatters as he eats two big slices of it, his small face and fingers sticky with glee.<p>

* * *

><p>The night before the school year starts again, his mother makes a whole chicken for dinner, filling the house to the brim with the aroma of roasting garlic. Meat isn't nearly as rare as it used to be, but this much of it all at once still signals a special occasion, and his mother sets the skillet onto the table with a smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes, pouring shredded chicken and luscious gravy over everyone's bowl of rice. Her young one starting school and her older one finally joining his proper class is worth a whole coop of chickens.<p>

No one is unkind the next day, but his classmates all smile and whisper at the wary boy's strange accent.

* * *

><p>There's only one boy in his grade taller than him, and they walk home together once his patient silence has worn through Dilan's caution. The fact that Aeleus, too, does the grocery shopping on the way home, further confirms that he's someone to be trusted. When they part ways most afternoons it's each with a bag full of what will become dinner, and if Aeleus's bag is sometimes lighter than it should be for how many people it has to feed, Dilan says nothing, knowing what it's like.<p>

* * *

><p>He's less a friend and more an extra son who happens not to sleep there, welcome always for dinner even if Aeleus isn't home. On the weekends, however, he sometimes does sleep over, and making breakfast is no chore for the pair of them. When Aeleus's mother and brothers get up, they find piles of buckwheat pancakes keeping warm under tea towels, one stack sweet with cinnamon and berries, the other savory with scallions and cheese. The two boys are already out in the street, sparring with their first stirrings of magic.<p>

* * *

><p>Storms excite him as a teen. The tension in the atmosphere tugs at him inside, and when the clouds burst he curls up in the window with a book and a bowl of persimmons, half-listening to the howling wind that sometimes, in calmer weather, listens to him in turn. Persimmons are his favorite fruit now that he's tried so many kinds, and he relishes each thick bite, being careful not to dribble juice onto the pages of his book, an ancient military treatise he's read often enough to break its flimsy spine.<p>

His mother watches him watch the storm, and when lightning sharpens his silhouette she sees for a moment the dead soldier from whom he inherited his violet eyes and affinity with the air. He asks why she's crying when she brings him another persimmon, but she only smiles, wiping away on the edge of her sleeve the memory of a memory of a love.

* * *

><p>Almost any time he eats something new, he learns how to make it at home, experimenting until he replicates it and then improves it to his liking. He bakes more than his mother ever has, trying to recreate the expensive pastries he sees glistening in shop windows, and while the fussier creations elude him, he gets quite good at various kinds of bread. He's an independent sort, and looks down on those of his peers who brag that they can't or don't feed themselves.<p>

He tweaks a neighbor's scone recipe until it pleases him, savoring one laced with apricots and white chocolate as he reads on a park bench one weekend in the spring, the nearby fountains splashing a merry tune.

* * *

><p>During the holidays he and Aeleus swap gingerbread cookies. The kind Aeleus's mother and everyone else in Radiant Garden makes are thin and crunchy, sparkling with sugar crystals; Dilan's mother's recipe is from the old country, and her gingerbreads are fat and soft, sharp with a different proportion of spices. Both teens like both kinds, so they trade, munching out of repurposed tea tins as they walk side-by-side down the chilly street, the tail ends of their scarves dancing behind them when the wind whips up higher.<p>

* * *

><p>She comes into his life like a wind comes rushing down from the mountains, a playful breeze perfumed with tiny flowers and pale sunshine that glints off unmelting snow. He feeds her anything she likes, up to his elbows in flour as he rolls out his first ever attempt at pasta dough, and she jokes with him from her seat at the table, her back to the row of herbs his mother grows in a basket on the windowsill. It's all very good, until it isn't, and then it hurts like nothing else.<p>

* * *

><p>The job is his once he and the chief shake hands over the last of the salad and cold chicken at the bailey. He applies himself to work as hard as he's applied himself to every other task he's been set in life, and eats a bit less well as a result. Two or three times a week he cooks too much and freezes the extra, so that when he comes off patrol in the early morning all he has to do before collapsing into bed is reheat a portion over the stove. Sometimes he doesn't even manage that, slurping down cold noodles with bags under his eyes as he watches the sunrise through the window.<p>

Once in a while there is something more extravagant: a holiday or birthday with his family and all the overindulgence that entails, or else talking over a bottle of red wine with someone who's become more than a friend. But only once in a while. Holidays only happen once a year, and there always comes an evening when he has to finish the wine by himself.

* * *

><p>It isn't like him to waste money eating out, but catching up with an old friend warrants it. The overcooked bacon in his sandwich crunches loudly and falls to pieces on the plate as Aeleus describes life up at the castle, and Dilan listens with more envy than he lets on. When Aeleus leaves the tail end of a thought hanging between them (half offer, half suggestion), Dilan puts down the other half of his sandwich, wondering if it could be possible. (As a matter of fact, it is.)<p>

* * *

><p>His mother cries when she sees him in the uniform, pressed and perfect, emblazoned with the heart-shaped royal crest. His brother teases him good-naturedly from the kitchen table as she makes him turn to admire him from every angle, and only the honeyed sweetbread needing to be pulled out of the oven is enough to interrupt her happy fussing. The poppy seeds smeared inside the warm loaf stick between his teeth as they eat it with tea.<p>

The only gift that surprises him is the cast-iron skillet. He refuses to take from her the only thing that survived from her homeland, but she insists until he relents. It's already been through a great deal, she tells him, smiling. It will bring good luck.

* * *

><p>His first autumn at the castle, he spends a day off peeling persimmons with a small knife, stringing them up and hanging them in the eaves, setting windy magic-traps to keep the birds away so they can dry for a month into snacks that will last the whole winter. Braig filches a few before they're quite ready, but it's a mistake he only dares to make once.<p>

* * *

><p>He doesn't cook for the others, generally, but if His Lordship looks peckish, that's an obvious exception. Dilan slides the last of the spinach frittata onto a plate, and Ansem gives a genial thanks as he wanders with it back to his study; Dilan bows his head reflexively when he leaves, and watches him go until he's out of sight down the hall. He'd been hoping to eat that for tomorrow's breakfast, but no matter. He'll make another one.<p>

* * *

><p>Good coffee is a luxury he never takes for granted. The apprentices all run on it—that and sugar, for Even—and Dilan grimaces as he watches Even ruin yet another innocent cup with spoonfuls of the guilty crystals. He shakes his head and mutters something derisive that Even doesn't quite catch, hiding behind his steaming mug when the scientist looks sidelong at him in suspicion.<p>

* * *

><p>His gruff reputation is hard-earned, and he does his best to defend it, even on those days when the mood strikes him to make something not entirely nutritious. He readies all kinds of excuses as he works the dough on the countertop, but luckily no one disturbs him, and as the angle of the sunlight through the kitchen window changes over time he forgets he's not supposed to enjoy this quite so much. Though really, why shouldn't he enjoy it? Food is fuel for the body, after all—as necessary to life as the swirling air that obeys him. Thus making food treads nowhere near the types of frivolity he scorns so deeply, and time spent in the kitchen is never time wasted. No poetry in this, to be sure.<p>

Yet it is with precision and delicacy that he presses his thumb into each smear of cookie dough, hollowing a space for sticky dollops of jam, satisfied like an artist only when they are perfect.

* * *

><p>They can't have a quiet evening, apparently, not on a night Ansem's given all three of his guardsmen leave; Braig won't stand for it. The pub is loud but the trio is louder, laughing and talking; Braig hiccups and then laughs even harder, clutching the edge of the table as he bends double from the sheer mirth of whatever jest fell into his mind, so that Aeleus has to grab his ragged scarf and haul him upright in his seat when he has trouble righting himself. Dilan's had enough ale to make him laugh, but not enough to dizzy him, nor to make him unfit to judge which stranger he finds most attractive.<p>

His way with words has never yet failed him, not even when a few pints have over-loosened his tongue. He leaves her before she wakes the next morning, but he leaves out breakfast, too, as a courtesy.

* * *

><p>The castle smells like pie for three weeks. He thinks he's inconspicuous enough on the day of the summer festival, trying to make his constant prowling past the judging booth seem accidental, but it's not enough to fool Aeleus, who finally wanders over to ask in amusement which of the dozens of entries is his. His wins third place with his favorite lemon pie.<p>

* * *

><p>If ordinarily Even is the most talented complainer Dilan's ever met, Even while under the weather is, amazingly, worse. Dilan can only stand the sneezing and coughing and whinging for three days before he rolls up his sleeves and sets pot and skillet side-by-side on the stovetop, bringing water to a boil and oil to a sizzle. Even accepts the resulting soup loaded with greens and meatballs and little pearls of pasta, but takes offense at the suggestion that his immune system might strengthen if he ate something besides packaged sweets and whichever types of noodles cook quickest in a beaker.<p>

* * *

><p>The new boy doesn't speak, but that's no business of his. Dilan stirs the thickening sauce absently, half an eye on the silent little figure still watching from the doorway, wondering whether perhaps he wants to help.<p>

Ienzo has to stand on a stool to see over the counter, but he does whatever Dilan tells him to with patience and precision. Whenever they need something out of the top cupboards, Dilan fetches it down and puts it back, but Ienzo measures it out and adds it to the pan. Dilan lets him stir while he dices more tomatoes.

* * *

><p>The newest apprentice has no family to be sent home to for the holidays, and so the others all stay this year, so that Ansem and the boy won't be alone for a week. Dilan returns from a day trip home with a pocket full of notecards scribbled while watching his mother at work, and some trial and error back at the castle lets him reproduce her best seasonal treats. The lower levels smell of cloves and cassia and ginger and sugar, and Braig laughs and punches him on the shoulder in thanks as he trots out of the kitchen with a mug of mulled wine. Dilan rolls his eyes and keeps shaping a mound of dough with a furrowed brow, flour whitening one of his sideburns when he wipes his cheek with the back of his hand.<p>

* * *

><p>He measures the months in harvests and seasons, counts the weeks not by days but by deliveries of ever-changing produce brought at dawn to the back gate: vegetables soft and green in spring, bright and lush in summer, full and ripe in autumn, hard and hearty in winter. It's only a handful of years that they live this way in peace, and in his memory much later—when he dares to dwell on it—the meals he made then all meld together into a string of idle pleasantries, hot soup and cold salad and roast this and fresh that—a careless, ceaseless feasting that will never come again. It began to end (he supposes later) when the monsters came...not the Heartless but the first ones, the ones they did not make.<p>

* * *

><p>He doesn't like to have his breakfast interrupted, especially not on one of those rare mornings when no one else in the castle is astir. But Braig is unusually insistent, and goes to fetch the master once Dilan finally agrees, so that Dilan stifles an annoyed sigh and finishes his coffee in one long swig, setting the newspaper aside. Before he leaves the kitchen he upturns another plate atop his own to trap heat, so that with any luck his bacon and eggs and the last triangle of toast will stay warm until they've sorted this out. Apparently there's a young man passed out in the courtyard.<p> 


End file.
